In this episode we interview Dr. Todd Timberlake about the book he co-authored with Dr. Paul Wallace: Finding Our Place in the Solar System, A Scientific View of the Copernican Revolution (Available March 28th, 2019 from Cambridge University Press). Dr. Timberlake's teaching materials can be found at: https://sites.berry.edu/ttimberlake/teachin ...…

In the years between 1840 and 1866, a debate took place between William Whewell and the philosopher and politician John Stuart Mill over the nature of scientific inquiry and moral philosophy at a time of great social change in Britain.

In this episode we consider several possible solutions to Hume's Problem of Induction including William Whewell's description of scientific inquiry, the hypothetico-deductive methods and Karl Popper's falsifiability criterion.

In our new Science and Certainty mini-series, we take a look at what is known as the Problem of Induction in the junction between epistemology and philosophy of science. We review what induction is and then look at various historical statements of the problem culminating with the work of Scottish philosopher, David Hume.…

In our final episode of the biographical series on Albert Einstein, we look at the last twenty years of his life in the United States. We consider his conversations with the mathematician Kurt Godel, the letters to Franklin Delano Roosevelt that helped initiate what would become the Manhattan Project, his post-war efforts to promote peace and h ...…

In this episode of the Scientific Odyssey, we delve more deeply into Einstein's religious views and recap the months up to his emigration to the United States to take a position at the Institute of Advanced Study.

In 1930, Albert Einstein wrote, “I believe that the most important mission of the state is to protect the individual and to make it possible for him to develop into a creative personality.” This concise statement of his political philosophy would guide his actions through much of the 1920's and early 30's as he used his fame and celebrity to ad ...…

In the words of physicist John Wheeler, “In all the history of human thought, there is no greater dialogue than that which took place over the years between Niels Bohr and Albert Einstein about the meaning of the quantum.” In this episode of the Scientific Odyssey we explore the relationship between the two men that began through journal articl ...…

When Einstein moved to Berlin in 1914, he entered into a period of intense turmoil, both in his scientific work and in his personal life. In this episode, we take a look at the factors that led him to Berlin and what transpired once he got there.

In the second half of 1905, Albert Einstein published tow papers that refined humanity's understanding of space and time as well as the relationship between mass and energy. In this episode, we examine the factors that led to these discoveries.

In 1905, Albert Einstein published five papers that changed the course of physics and the modern world. In this episode, we look at the first three of those works including his paper on the photoelectric effect, his derivation of Avogardo's number and his analysis of Brownian motion that more or less proved the existence of atoms.…

In this second part of our examination of Einstein's life before the Miracle Year of 1905, we examine the period between his graduation from the Zurich Polytechnic and his being hired at the Swiss patent office. We discuss his scientific work as well as his relationship with Mileva Maric and the issues surround that.…

In 1896, Albert Einstein enrolled in the teacher preparation program for physics and mathematics at the Zurich Polytechnic. We look at the events that brought him to that point and what transpired while he was a student there, including the beginning of his romantic relationship with Mileva Maric.

For A. S. Eddington, the most important thing a think ing person could do, whether they be a scientist or a person of faith, was to follow a path of inquiry that sought to uncover new insights and new truths. In this episode, we look at how this value influenced Eddington's work in stellar structure and relativity. Additionally, we look at how ...…

In this episode we consider the question of whether a person can be both religious and a scientist by looking at the early life of the British Astrophysicist and lifelong Quaker, Arthur Stanley Eddington.

In our final narrative episode of this series, we encounter the last piece of the cosmological puzzle-dark energy. We look at the way in which is was discovered and what it means for the ultimate fate of our universe.

This week we look at the work of Vera Rubin and Fritz Zwicky that led to the idea that roughly 85% of the matter in the universe can't be detected except by the gravitational influence on the matter we can see. We also consider alternative explanations and examine the evidence in favor of Dark Matter.…

In the late 1960's and early 1970's, several problems arose with the Big Bang Theory's attempt to explain certain aspects of the early universe. In 1979, Alan Guth worked out a solution to those known as the Inflationary Model that added a new layer of understanding of the physical processes that governed the earliest moments of the cosmos.…

This week we look at the work of a number of astrophysicists including Cecilia Payne, Arthur Eddington, Hans Bethe and Charles Critchfield, and Fred Hoyle and Willie Fowler to better understand how the elements are made within the cores of stars. Special introduction by Stephen Guerra of the History of the Papacy and the Beyond the Big Screen p ...…

In 1948, one of the most important papers in the history of science was published in the pages of the Physical Review. In it, authors Ralph Alpher, Hans Bethe (in absentia) and George Gamow not only perpetrated one of the greatest plays on words in the annals of science, they also put forward the physical calculations in support that the univer ...…

In our third and final installment of the life of George Ellery Hale, we look at the establishment of the Mt. Wilson Observatory and his other endeavors. We also examine the psychological pressures that drove him and eventually lead to his mental breakdown.

In the decade between 1890 and 1900, George Hale went from being a promising graduate of MIT to the world famous director of the Yerkes Observatory. In this episode, we follow his life and work during this critical time.

The shift from astronomy to astrophysics necessitated the development of new tools of observation at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century. In this episode, we look at the rise of the reflecting telescopes and the men who use them including, James Keeler and George Ritchey, probably the greatest telescope designer in history.…

In 1927 Fr. Georges Lemaitre published a paper in a little known Belgian scientific journal that described an expanding universe. Two years later, Milton Humason and Edwin Hubble presented evidence to support support this model. In this episode, we look at the development of the idea of a universe that was not static or steady.…

On November 25th of 1915, Albert Einstein presented a paper on his General Theory of Relativity that by its end had conclusively shown that the Vulcan hypothesis was not necessary to explain the precession of the perihelion of the orbit of Mercury. It also completely reimagined the structure of space and time and remade the universe. In this ep ...…

In 1925, the astronomer Henry Norris Russell read a paper at the 33rd meeting of the American Astronomical Society. The paper, written by Edwin Hubble, a staff astronomer at the Mt. Wilson observatory, detailed observations of Cepheid variable stars in the Andromeda Nebula. These observations and the analysis of them showed that the spiral was ...…

On April 26th of 1920, Harlow Shapley and Heber Curtis presented talks on the idea of island universes to the National Academy of Sciences. Held at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, the Great Debate, as it would come to be known, would showcase two differing views of the scale and structure of the universe.…

In 1914, Harlow Shapley moved to work at the Mt. Wilson Observatory. Over the course of five years, using the 60 inch reflector there, he observed the 75 visible globular clusters and developed a whole new model of the Milky Way Galaxy and our place in it.

In our final episode of this mini-series on the women who worked at the Harvard College Observatory, we dive into the life of Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin from her time at Cambridge University to her life in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Annie Jump Cannon and Henrietta Swan Leavitt would form the core of the calculation staff at the Harvard College Observatory for nearly two decades. They oversaw the transition of the Observatory from the directorship of Edward Charles Pickering to Harlow Shapley and established the dominant classification systems and physical laws for stellar ...…

In the first part of a multi episode series, we look at the lives of two very different women. Williamina Fleming and Antonia Maury both made significant contributions to the field of stellar spectroscopy by developing classification systems to better understand the light from stars but their different backgrounds and training meant that they u ...…

This week we take an in-depth look at the work done at the Harvard College Observatory on cataloging and classifying variable stars under the direction of Charles Edward Pickering. We examine the contributions of Williamina Fleming, Annie Jump Cannon and Henrietta Swan Leavitt that resulted in the the period luminosity relationship, also known ...…

This week we take a look at weather forecasting after the Navigator's trip to Boulder, CO for the NASA Social event for the launch of the JPSS-1 polar orbiting satellite. We discuss a brief history of weather forecasting, the roles of both geosynchronous and polar orbiting satellites in that endeavor and the JPSS program. Specific attention is ...…

In the years between 1905 and 1911, the astronomer Ejnar Hertzsprung and Henry Russell Norris developed a way of representing the accumulating astronomical and astrophysical data on stars that revealed the presence of a relationship between a stars brightness and its temperature. This Hertzsprung-Russell or H-R Diagram would come to revolutioni ...…

This week, with the help of steampunk attired lady and gentleman bugs, we take a look at the Doppler effect. We use water waves, sound and light to examine the consequences of what happens with the observer of a wave is moving with respect to the wave's source. We also look at the history of the idea from the work of Christian Doppler to the ap ...…

This week we look at the spectral classification work of Antonia Maury and Annie Jump Cannon at the Harvard College Observatory.

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